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"Francis of Assisi on Eating and Worshipping with Animals"
  • Thursday, October 15, 2015 - 4:30pm to 5:30pm

FBH, room 401


Francis of Assisi on Eating and Worshipping with Animals: 

The earliest Lives of Francis of Assisi, which the Franciscan order suppressed after 1266, give non-human animals an unorthodox prominence. In these early Lives, Francis’s several refusals to eat animals are a first symptom of his resistance to the medieval Christian dichotomy between human and animal. Together with further traces in the earliest records, Francis’s protection of animal life contributes to an embodied piety that does not purge material commitments from spiritual devotion. This somatic and affective piety moves well beyond anecdotes in the later Lives of Francis in which he praises birds for singing to their Creator, and wild animals obey him because they perceive his saintliness. Many other Saints’ Lives agree that God can open animal awareness in such ways. In contrast, the visceral piety of the early Lives of Francis calls to mind, in the present context of critical animal studies, the diverse efforts of Deleuze and Guattari, Agamben, and Haraway to decenter the human and to move beyond species differentiation toward deeper awareness of species contiguity. Francis mobilizes his physical vulnerability and his physical senses to explore the ethical dimensions of human-animal cohabitation and to engage himself with animals in cross-species performances of piety.

Susan Crane specializes in English and French medieval literature and culture. The consequences of the Norman conquest for Britain's linguistic, literary, and social history are the focus of Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature (California UP 1986) and subsequent articles on insular bilingualism. Gender and Romance in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (Princeton UP 1992) argues for interrelations between literary genres and ideologies of sexuality. The Performance of Self: Ritual, Clothing, and Identity During the Hundred Years War (Pennsylvania UP 2002) investigates pre-modern identity as it is expressed in secular rituals such as tournaments, weddings, and mummings. Current projects explore medieval interspecies relationships and the contributions of animal studies to environmental studies.